Chapter Ten:

Late Imperial China

This chapter covers some of the major political, military, and institutional developments during China's last two dynasties, the Ming and the Qing. Because the material here is relatively straightforward, we will not specifically cover it in class, though some of the points here will come up in the course of discussing other topics. The next chapter on social history, for example, makes important distinctions between conditions during the Ming dynasty and the changed situation during the Qing. So, study this material on your own, and ask about anything that is not clear.

The Ming Dynasty

The first Ming emperor was an odd combination of idealist and ruthless despot. He was a former Buddhist monk who developed a penchant for trying to spread Confucian moral values through the violent methods of the Legalist tradition. Those with an interest in amateur psychoanalysis sometimes theorize that the first Ming emperor suffered from an inferiority complex owing to *physical ugliness.* In any event, he was an activist emperor, writing in 1377:

When the ruler, who settles a myriad exigencies every day, becomes negligent, then everything comes to a standstill and endless disasters result. Ever since taking the throne I have forced myself to be diligent. I come to court before dawn and go back to the palace after dark. When I can't sleep at night I get up and dress. Sometimes I scan the skies and take alarm if a star is out of place, and sometimes I ponder public matters, and if I find that something needs immediate action I make a written note of it so I can issue the appropriate orders at dawn. I would like to relax, of course, but I fear the Mandate of Heaven and have to do as I do.1

Notice the emperor's concern over the Mandate of Heaven and with astrological portents (his taking alarm if a star is out of place). This emperor took his duty to regulate the harmony of the three realms most seriously.

But the first Ming emperor had great difficulty regulating the human realm. He sought personally to wipe out corruption and immorality in his empire and saw himself as the people's teacher. As his reign went on, he became increasingly frustrated by the apparent impossibility of the task. He explained:

The ancients instituted punishments in order to stop evil and quell violence, and they had others witness these so that they would not dare commit offenses. But now there exist such corrupt villains that they look upon the state's laws as nothing extraordinary and take punishment just the way they eat or drink. Though they are heavily punished and their limbs mutilated, their minds are so boggled by corruption that they blithely have no fear for themselves and commit even further acts that demand the death penalty.2

As he became more frustrated the emperor became more violent. "Heavily punished" became an understatement for anyone who incurred his wrath. He regarded penal terror as moral medicine, and when it failed to have the desired effect, he increased the dose. In one case of corrupt high officials in 1386, he paraded them before their assembled colleagues. Then:

I [the emperor] went in person to the Taiping Gate, I gave them [the corrupt officials] countless hard lashes, I cut off their feet, and I exhibited all this to the nonguilty ones of the Board. With my own eyes I witnessed this law and this punishment and my hair stood on end because of it. I was sure there would be no repetition of this crime.

. . . I cut off their feet before the Board, and while the survivors were still in terrible pain and bleeding, and the corpses of the others had not yet been taken away [more official malfeasance was committed]. . . . Officials change good to evil and vice versa, subvert everything to fatten themselves with profit, and while many are executed the rest refuse to take it as a warning. . . . Alas, this is how foolhardy men's minds are. Just looking at this, I don't know how the world can be securely ordered. May wise men take note of this.3

Here is an example of the conflict between emperor and officials we examined previously. Though he cut off the feet of corrupt officials for all to see, the act failed to change the others' behavior or attitudes, at least in the emperor's mind. Notice in the above passages the emperor's near obsession with the law and punishment. While he frequently spoke of Confucius, he acted more like the first emperor of the Qin dynasty.

Some policies of this emperor included abolishing slavery, setting up programs to rent farmland and equipment to landless persons at low rates, imposing high taxes on the rich, and otherwise attempting social and economic leveling on a vast scale. Mixing a variety of institutions from previous dynasties, the first Ming emperor set up a powerful centralized administration in which he alone had significant power and authority. The Ming was the most autocratic of China's dynasties, a development its founding emperor encouraged.

Early Ming emperors maintained a large standing army and took an active role in expanding Chinese territory and interests abroad. The third emperor, for example, personally led five military campaigns into Mongolia. He also sent out seven naval expeditions into the Indian ocean. These expeditions explored large areas of South Asia and the coast of Africa. Indeed, according to some recent findings, these expeditions circled the globe and "discovered" the Americas about 70 years before Columbus. This period was the only time in China's history that it was a great naval power. Official xenophobia, however, accompanied this early Ming tendency to expand. For example, in striking contrast to the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Tang dynasty, Ming emperors forbade Chinese to have any contact with foreigners except on official business. As the Ming dynasty matured, the expansionism of its early years came to an end. Indeed, for several years when Japanese pirate raids in certain coastal areas became a problem, the imperial court ordered all inhabitants of the areas to move inland, organizing effective defenses only reluctantly. China had turned inward, and would maintain this relative lack of interest in the outside world until the late nineteenth century.

The first Ming emperor created a method of foreign relations commonly called the tribute system in English. He did not create the tribute system out of the blue, for previous dynasties had long expected foreign rulers who wished to trade with the Chinese empire to present gifts to the emperor and call them "tribute." What the first Ming emperor did was to systematize such practices. Wills explains one reason for the Ming creation of the tribute system:

[T]he Ming founders, emperor and officials, shared the general revulsion against foreign rule and the compensatory reassertion of the superiority of every Chinese value and institution. One important expression of this was the insistence that all foreign contact with China take the form of carefully managed embassies bearing 'tribute' and acknowledging the supremacy of the Son of Heaven.4

The starting assumption of the tribute system was that China was the center and source of world civilization. The peoples on China's periphery were comparatively barbaric--at least in the eyes of educated Chinese. That the people of these "barbarian" countries desired contact and trade with China and its civilization was understandable, but the Ming emperors determined to keep foreign trade and other contact under close scrutiny and control to serve their own purposes. In many respects *the Chinese tribute system* (*graphic*) was an extension of internal Chinese social relations (li) outward beyond the borders of the Chinese empire. This mode of foreign relations, and the assumptions behind it, continued to operate during the Qing dynasty, most significantly in the Qing empire's relationship with European countries (see later material in this chapter). In part because the Qing emperors were Manchus, Qing foreign relations with inner Asian countries were rather complex and did not always follow the relatively simple "tribute system" model presented here.

Relations between the emperors and their officials were generally poor throughout the Ming dynasty. It was as if the increased authoritarian character of the Ming state caused greater bureaucratic intransigence. We have seen the frustration of the first Ming emperor in his unsuccessful attempts to use violence to bend the bureaucracy into his vision of ideal government officials. In contrast to the vigorous personal administration of the early Ming emperors, later emperors often allowed eunuchs to direct the workings of government. These later emperors still distrusted their officials, but they also lacked the will or interest personally to take the lead in affairs of state. They therefore allowed eunuchs to make decisions about matters of state, which led to the eunuchs becoming extremely powerful. Eunuchs were men, nearly always impoverished in their youth, who underwent castration to serve in the emperor's inner palace. Because of their strategic locations, some eunuchs got the emperor's ear and affected his thinking, decisions, and policies. Regular officials despised the eunuchs for their meddling in state affairs, and few eunuchs had any great liking for the scholar-officials. Allowing eunuchs to become powerful, therefore, was one way that an emperor could punish the bureaucracy without exerting a great deal of effort. Although eunuchs had sometimes become powerful in earlier dynasties, their power and influence reached new heights during the second half of the Ming dynasty.

The most notorious example of an emperor relinquishing power to eunuchs was the Wanli Emperor (r. 1573-1620). For reasons we need not examine here, he became so cynical that for roughly twenty years he essentially stopped working. John King Fairbank explains:

The Wanli Emperor . . . became so disenchanted with the moralistic attacks and counterattacks of officials that he was thoroughly alienated from his imperial role. He finally resorted to vengeful tactics of blocking or ignoring the conduct of administration. For years on end he refused to see his ministers or act upon memorials. He refused to make necessary appointments. The whole top echelon of Ming administration became understaffed. In short, Wanli tried to forget about his imperial responsibility while squirreling away what he could for his private purse. Considering the emperor's required role as kingpin of the state, this personal rebellion against the bureaucracy was not only bankruptcy but treason.5

With so much power and importance vested in the office of the emperor, one who decided to stop working could cause severe problems for the government.

The last half of the Ming dynasty was a time of unimpressive emperors. One emperor, Xizong 熹宗 (r. 1620-27)6, displayed little interest in anything except carpentry and woodworking. He built chairs and various kinds of furniture in his palace workshop and was apparently very good at it. So busy was he with woodworking that he never learned to read and write--quite an embarrassment in a culture that regarded writing as the highest form of cultural accomplishment. Under Xizong's reign, the dynasty's most notorious eunuch despot, Wei Zhongxian (1568-1627), came to power, presiding over a reign or terror while the emperor built furniture. Wills aptly characterizes the Ming emperors in general as "a most unimpressive line of individuals."7

Let us turn to a famous example of a morally courageous official of the Ming dynasty. Hai Rui 海瑞 (1515-1587) began his career as an instructor at a government school. He worked his way up the ladder of officialdom, eventually becoming Secretary of the Ministry of Revenue. Blunt and fearless, in 1565 he wrote a scathing memorial to the reigning emperor, Shizong. The memorial charged the emperor with neglect of government, excessive interest in unusual religious ceremonies, and misuse of state funds to build extravagant palaces and mansions for himself. Hai Rui even compared the emperor unfavorably with certain infamous rulers of past dynasties.

Enraged upon seeing the memorial, the emperor ordered guards to make sure *Hai Rui* did not escape. The guards answered that there was no need to worry. Hai Rui was calmly waiting outside and had even brought his own coffin along. The emperor realized that having Hai Rui killed immediately would make him a martyr, and all of his accusations against the emperor would ring true to other officials, who might then cause trouble. So the emperor had Hai Rui thrown in prison while the court manufactured evidence against the courageous official. Hai Rui was tortured and sentenced to death, but Emperor Shizong died unexpectedly, before the sentence could be carried out. The next emperor realized that he could use Hai Rui to enhance the imperial image by appearing to heed criticism and favor honest officials. Hai Rui resumed his official career, but his sharp criticism was not reserved for the emperor alone. He also managed to offend many other officials, which caused his *dismissal from office,* though only temporarily. Hai Rui was eventually "promoted" to the prestigious but "harmless" post of Censor-in-Chief of Nanjing. This post was a great honor but lacked actual power. After his death, Hai Rui became idealized as a perfect official and paragon of courageous remonstrance. Courageous remonstrance was one of the highest values in Chinese political culture, but those who actually practiced it were few.

(In Ming times, and also today, a common technique for criticizing others in China was to compare them with certain historical figures. In 1962 Wu Han, Deputy Mayor of Beijing, wrote a play, Hai Rui Dismissed from Office (Hai Rui ba guan). The play featured Hai Rui as an honest minister who stood up for the common people but whom an autocratic emperor dismissed from office. Such a play might seem devoid of controversy at first glance, but at the time, many considered it a thinly veiled critique of China's autocratic leader Mao Zedong, who in 1959 dismissed his defense minister under circumstances similar to those Wu Han depicted in the play. Many historians regard a 1965 article denouncing Wu Han's play as the start of the Cultural Revolution.)

The Ming dynasty was a dangerous, frustrating time for those involved in politics. Many would-be officials therefore stayed out of government and turned their attention to cultural pursuits. Many of China's greatest novels were written during the Ming dynasty. Although the novel was not a fully respected form of literature at the time, today many Ming novels are considered classics of world literature. The most famous Ming novels are The Golden Lotus (also known as Jin Ping Mei), The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin (also known as All Men Are Brothers), and Journey to the West. *Novels* were quite popular in Ming times among the well-to-do (remember, the majority of Chinese at this time were illiterate), who found them much more interesting than dry, moralistic Confucian literature. The Golden Lotus, for example is as racy as any modern novel, if not more so. Some Confucian moralists condemned this and other novels as pornography but still managed, it seems, to read them in private. The Ming dynasty was perhaps the high water mark for Chinese erotic culture (or low water mark, some moralists would say). The Qing emperors proved to be much more puritanical (for want of a better term) than their Ming counterparts and promoted policies to suppress many forms of sexual expression. (#more about novels#)

The Ming dynasty was also a time of great activity in drama. Many plays written at this time took the form of dreams, which allowed for greater freedom of dramatic effect. In the eighteenth century, many classic dramas from the Ming dynasty were adapted to popular audiences. This process gave birth to #Beijing Opera,# featuring elaborate acrobatics and singing, which is still popular today.

By the 1620s, the Manchus began to encroach on Chinese territory. The region known as Manchuria is today the extreme northeast portion of China, across the border from North Korea. In the early 1600s it was not part of the Chinese empire. The Manchus were cultural cousins of the Mongols, who lived farther to the west and pursued a similar lifestyle of nomadic herding. By the 1620s, the Ming dynasty was potentially still quite strong. It lacked political unity, however, and also faced serious financial problems. A domestic rebel, Li Zicheng, captured Beijing in 1644. When the capital fell, the last Ming emperor hung himself and many others took their own lives as well:

Minister of Revenue Ni Yuanlu hanged himself, and twelve members of his household followed him. Others who committed suicide included the minister of works, the censor in chief, a vice minister of justice, and the chief justice of the Grand Court of Revision. Officials of middle grades and junior ranks who chose to die rather than survive the dynasty were countless. Some 200 women drowned themselves in the creek that flowed through the palace compound.8

Although the Ming dynasty was not able to save itself, it retained the loyal support of many officials and other subjects. Throughout the next dynasty, there would remain a lingering feeling of loyalty to the memory of the fallen Ming.

Combined Chinese and Manchu forces drove the rebel Li out of Beijing, though not before Li's soldiers went on a rampage of terror and looting. The Manchus set themselves up in the fallen Ming capital, thereby establishing China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing.

Founding of the Qing Dynasty

In general, the Qing emperors left the Ming system of government in place, but they made a few significant changes. (Read the section *"Qing government and society."*) The first major change was establishing the Manchu banner system in north China. A "Banner" was an administrative unit that consisted of several military colonies. These colonies were responsible for supplying designated numbers of soldiers to the government in times of military need. There were several banners, each with its own lands. The members of the military colonies engaged in agriculture and enjoyed tax and other benefits in return for their military service obligations. Most of the Banners were Manchu, but the dynasty did establish some Banners that consisted of Chinese or other ethnic groups such as Mongolians. The effectiveness of the banner system declined in the later part of the dynasty, but in early Qing times, it functioned well as a cost-effective way to maintain a powerful military organization.

Although Manchu soldiers had taken the capital and established their banner system in the vicinity, it would be almost half a century before they completely conquered the Chinese empire. Resistance to the Manchus in the south of China was widespread and lasted into the 1680s. The last stronghold of the Ming loyalists was the island of Taiwan, which fell in 1683. It was at this point that all of China came under Manchu rule, but an undercurrent of Chinese resentment of the Manchus lingered throughout the life of the dynasty.

The Manchu emperors embraced Chinese institutions and culture but simultaneously took steps to preserve Manchu culture. With a few exceptions, they went out of their way to avoid exacerbating cultural and ethnic tensions. The Manchu rulers undertook the study of Chinese language and culture, and the great Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722) was a master of the Confucian classics and other forms of Chinese literature. Ray Huang points out that "The Qing emperors, on the whole, lived much closer to the expectation of the Chinese tradition than did numerous indigenous rulers of preceding dynasties."9 Early Qing emperors became sinicized, ruled firmly but well, and came closer to the ideal of sage rulers than any emperor of the previous Ming dynasty. The population recovered from the problems of the late Ming years and prospered. This situation engendered a dilemma for those educated Chinese who had lived during the time of the Ming dynasty, and, to a lesser extent, educated Chinese any time in the Qing era:

Traditional statecraft, growing out of the teachings of Mencius, taught them [educated Chinese] to value the satisfaction of the population at large regardless of the origin of the ruler . . . . On that count, they had no cause to raise their standard against the Qing. Yet, bound by the practice of those days, to acquiesce [to Manchu rule] was to collaborate, which would always be a source of inner conflict.10

Should one serve an alien dynasty of "barbarians" that nevertheless ruled well, or, should one refuse to serve the state out of loyalty to the previous Ming dynasty or out of an ethnocentric sense that "Chinese" do not serve "barbarians?" It is safe to say that this issue crossed the mind of nearly every educated Chinese at one time or another during the Qing dynasty. Even the great modern scholar Qian Mu had to deal with these sorts of questions. At age eight, in 1904, he was shocked to hear from a teacher that the emperor of China was not Chinese:

My teacher Bogui also told me, 'You know that our emperor is not Chinese, don't you?' I was shocked and said I didn't know. When I got home I asked my father about it. He said, 'Your teacher is right. Our emperor is a Manchu, and we are Han [Chinese] people. That's why there are sometimes things in the shops with both Han and Man[chu] writing.'11

Throughout most of the Qing dynasty we do not find nationalism in the modern sense of the word.12 For one thing, only a small portion of the total population--persons with a high level of education--probably had a strong consciousness of themselves as distinctly "Chinese." It is easy to overstate the degree of ethnic tension at the time by reading our modern conceptions of "nation" into the premodern past. Still, some degree of Chinese-Manchu ethnic tension always existed at or below the surface of Qing China.

Qing emperors were ever on the lookout for Chinese writings critical of Manchus or northern "barbarians" in general. Qing authorities burned such writings, and those associated with them would face severe punishment. Lu Liuliang was a bitterly anti-Manchu scholar, physician and monk who died in 1683. His anti-Manchu writings circulated underground in central China and inspired a young schoolteacher, Zeng Jing, to explore the possibility of overthrowing the Qing state. His plot was found out and he was arrested. Upon investigating the matter, the Yongzheng emperor became enraged that Lu's writings were in circulation. He responded by having Lu's corpse exhumed and dismembered. Then he had all of Lu's surviving relatives enslaved or exiled to remote locations. As for Zeng Jing, the emperor used him for positive publicity: "He made a dramatic gesture of pardoning Zeng with no more than a reprimand on the grounds that he had been gullible."13 But Zeng was not so fortunate in the long run. When the Yongzheng emperor died, his son, the new emperor, "Claiming filial loyalty to his insulted father . . . reversed Yongzheng's edict of clemency and ordered the unfortunate Zeng Jing . . . sliced to pieces in the market of [Beijing]."14 Though generally more benevolent than their Ming predecessors, there were some things China's Manchu rulers would not tolerate.

Although China's new rulers quickly learned Chinese culture and presented themselves as Confucian sages, they did impose one aspect of Manchu culture onto the entire Chinese male population. As a sign of submission to Manchu rule, the dynasty required all males to wear their hair in Manchu style. This style differed markedly from Chinese style and required shaving some hair at the top of the forehead and allowing the rest to grow into a long braided ponytail. In English, this hair style is commonly called the *queue.* It is easy to identify pictures and photographs from the Qing period because men will inevitably have queues during this dynasty but not before or after. Because wearing the queue was a political act, cutting it was one way to make an anti-Manchu political statement--a statement punishable by death during Qing times. (#graphic image#--very graphic; warning: not pleasant)

China's Tragic Encounter with Europe

In the eighteenth century, the merchants of several European countries began to take a strong interest in direct trade with China. There was a high demand in western Europe for certain Chinese products, especially tea, porcelain, and silk. We have seen that from the start of the Ming dynasty, Chinese officials regarded foreign relations as an exercise in ceremonial reaffirmation of China's cultural superiority. They viewed trade as a privilege the emperor might extent to "barbarians" who demonstrate proper ritual submission. In the official rhetoric, at least, China did not need anything from the outside world. Strictly speaking, this assertion was probably correct, although there were some items (clocks, for example) that well-to-do Chinese definitely wanted from Europe.

The view of international trade that prevailed in Europe at the time was quite different. There, international trade was a legitimate end in itself. Treaties and other conventions agreed upon by countries of theoretically equal standing governed commercial intercourse between countries. In the eighteenth century, Europeans who wanted to trade with China had no choice but to follow Chinese rules.

Because Europeans generally refused to participate in formal tributary relations with China, one might think that the Qing court would have excluded them from trade altogether. But official rhetoric aside, China's government did have an interest in monetary profit, and European merchants paid for their purchases in silver. The Qing court therefore set aside the port of Guangzhou (Canton), in the extreme south of China, for European trade. There, traders from England, France, other countries of Europe, and later, the United States, traded with Chinese merchants under strictly regulated conditions. The Chinese merchants who conducted the trade did so under license by the central government and paid large fees for the privilege. In this way, trade with the Europeans provided a small but useful source of revenue for China's government.

Guangzhou served as the sole Chinese port for trade with Europe from 1760 until 1842. The system of trade that prevailed there is commonly called the Canton system. Each European country that pursued trade rented a building that served as a combination embassy and trading center. A walled compound surrounded these buildings. The European merchants were not free to travel in Guangzhou, and soldiers guarded the outside of the compound around the clock. Only authorized Chinese merchants were allowed in, and Europeans were allowed out only rarely. Local Chinese officials exacted bribes from European and Chinese merchants alike, both of whom regarded these bribes as an unfortunate but necessary cost of doing business. Chinese officials expected Europeans in Guangzhou to be humble and obedient at all times. They were subject to Chinese law. The merchants usually behaved as their Chinese hosts expected them to, because failure to do so might result in Chinese revocation of trading privileges. Chinese officials assumed that by relegating the Europeans to the periphery of the empire and keeping them under close watch they would cause no major trouble. As long as China had sufficient military power to enforce its wishes, and as long as trade on the European side remained a private affair, not directly connected with home governments, this assumption proved correct.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Britain's government began to show signs of greater interest in China. In 1792, it sent an embassy of roughly 100 persons headed by Lord George Macartney to the Qianlong Emperor's court. The ostensible purpose of the embassy was to congratulate the emperor on his eightieth birthday, which resulted in the embassy being escorted to Beijing with much pomp and ceremony as a "tribute embassy" in Chinese eyes. The real purpose of the journey from Britain's point of view was to establish formal, European-style diplomatic relations with China including wider trade and permission for British missionaries to preach Christianity. Chinese officials treated the embassy well, even after Macartney refused to perform the full ritual of bowing before the emperor ("kowtow"). In the end, however, the emperor's answer was a firm "no." In a formal reply edict to Britain's King George III the Chinese emperor stated that China had no need for, or interest in, foreign items no matter how ingenious they may be. He reaffirmed that it was only because of the emperor's generosity that foreigners were allowed to trade at all, and all such trade must take place in Guangzhou and nowhere else. The edict ended with the emperor commanding King George to "tremblingly obey and show no negligence!" The Jiaqing Emperor (r. 1796-1820) did not even deign to see a second British embassy led by Lord Amherst in 1816 because Amherst, like Macartney, refused to bow down before the Chinese emperor in the manner customary for tributary envoys visiting China.

In the decades after the Macartney mission departed from China, a serious problem connected with the British merchants began to emerge. A major economic concern for the Europeans trading with China was the lack of European products that Chinese were willing to purchase in profitable quantities. European vessels typically sailed for China with a light load, sold a few odds and ends, and then filled the cargo holds with tea, porcelain, silk, and other Chinese items. The ship's supercargo paid for these Chinese items in cash. Although voyages still made a profit this way, it would have been better to make a profit twice: once by selling European goods to Chinese merchants and then vice versa upon return home. English merchants (later joined by U.S. merchants) at last found the perfect item for sale in China: opium obtained from India (or Turkey in the U.S. case). Opium had long been a medicinal drug in China, but the British merchants supplied it for recreational use. As more Chinese became addicted, the demand for opium grew. It became common for well-to-do Chinese to frequent opium dens to smoke, temporarily leave their cares behind and sometimes also engage the services of prostitutes. Opium addiction increased and the Qing government became alarmed, banning the drug for all but medicinal uses. We should keep in mind that prohibitions against recreational drug use in Britain and the U.S. were twentieth-century developments. In the 1800s, the recreational use of opium was perfectly legal in Britain, and some prominent figures like the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) used the drug.

Opium was a growing social problem in China, and it also became an economic problem for the Qing government. Before opium sales took off in the 1820s (*see chart*)15, China enjoyed a net surplus of silver from the trade with Britain and other European countries. Thanks to opium, the flow of silver reversed, and the Qing government became alarmed at this outflow of specie to foreign countries. In the mid 1830s, the highest ministers of state began to debate the relative merits of two courses of action. One was to legalize opium sales and then tax the drug. The other was to devote greater energy to the elimination of opium use in China. Each side had strong support. In 1838, the Daoguang  Emperor (r. 1821-50) decided to crack down on the opium trade. For this purpose he selected the incorruptible official Lin Zexu to travel to Guangzhou as an imperial commissioner and do whatever would prove necessary to rid the Guangzhou area of opium.

Commissioner Lin addressed both the domestic side (consumption by Chinese) and the foreign side (sales by British and American merchants). Regarding the later, he started negotiations with the resident British trade commissioner. Lin demanded the British commissioner hand over all the opium that had been stored up in the foreign compound. British merchants had much opium on hand at the time because they incorrectly guessed that opium sales in China would soon be legal. To make a long story short, Commissioner Lin eventually had to use intimidating tactics such as having the compound surrounded, cutting off all supplies into it, and keeping up around the clock noise by having teams of soldiers beat gongs and use other noise-making devices in shifts. The British commissioner finally gave in, and Lin's soldiers destroyed all the opium. As the foreigners in Guangzhou watched the opium being destroyed, Commissioner Lin wrote in a memorial to the emperor that they "do not dare show any disrespect, and indeed, I should judge from their attitudes that they have the decency to feel heartily ashamed."16

But the British merchants had no such decency and were anything but ashamed. They returned home and petitioned the crown to take action against China. In their testimony, many merchants exaggerated the severity of Chinese actions. In fact, Commissioner Lin had acted with great restraint, and not one foreigner was injured--except financially. After some debate, the British government responded by sending a fleet. At its peak, the force included about twenty major vessels and 10,000 soldiers. Fighting began in late 1839 and lasted until the summer of 1842, with some pauses along the way for negotiations. In some places the Qing forces fought poorly and in others they fought heroically, but everywhere they lost because British weapons and tactics were vastly superior. Had the year been 1740 instead of 1840, the results would probably have been reversed, but over the course of that century European military technology had rapidly advanced, while Chinese military capabilities had rapidly declined. The Opium War, as the conflict soon came to be called, was a significant turning point:

[I]t is worth re-emphasizing that in military terms the Opium War of 1839-1842 marked an important historical moment. It was not only the most decisive reversal the Manchus had ever received, it also saw innovations in Western military technology and tactics. The emergence of the steam-driven vessel as a considerable force in naval battles was perhaps the most important of these . . . .17

The Qing dynasty never fully recovered from the British victory.

When British forces were poised to capture Nanjing and threaten Beijing, Qing officials became serious about ending the war. They agreed to a major treaty, the Treaty of Nanjing, signed in 1842. The treaty was overwhelmingly favorable to Britain. It, plus a supplementary treaty signed a year later, contained the following major provisions:

The U.S. government, and the governments of many European countries, signed similar treaties with China shortly afterward.

One might think that this devastating defeat would have prompted large-scale reform in China. It did not, as Huang explains:

We may note here that after the Opium War the court at Beijing never conducted an inquiry to determine what happened, or send observers overseas, or made institutional readjustments. The blueprints of modern military equipment offered by the American envoy were politely declined. Of all the clauses included in the Treaty of Nanjing and the supplementary treaty, the one that grieved the Manchu and Chinese officials most was that thenceforth diplomatic correspondence with the barbarians had to be handled on an equal basis.18

The Qing dynasty went back to business as usual, or what it thought was business as usual, and soon began to resist implementation of some parts of the treaty. A new emperor came to the throne in 1850 who was thoroughly xenophobic and contemptuous of the British. The result of these and other developments was a new round of warfare between 1857 and 1860 in which China suffered terrible defeats at the hands of combined Anglo-French land and sea forces. An Anglo-French force eventually took over Beijing and set fire to the Emperor's magnificent summer palace as he and his court fled northward.

This fighting resulted in a new round of treaties that gave much greater concessions to Europeans (and Americans because of the most favored nation clause). China's defeat prompted some effort by reforming officials to establish modern industries for military production, the so-called Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s and 70s. The leaders of this movement attempted to use "Western" industrial technology without significantly altering the social fabric of China. Ultimately the goal was to produce a China sufficiently strong that it could deal effectively with Britain and the other foreign powers. In the end, however, the Self-Strengthening Movement was a case of too little too late. The proof of its failure came in 1894-5 when China suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of its much smaller neighbor Japan.

For reasons we need not explore here, the Qing dynasty went to war with Japan (the first Sino-Japanese War) in 1894 (#click here# for details on the causes of this war). Most European commentators predicted a Chinese victory, for the Qing forces enjoyed great numerical superiority. Instead, however, Japan was everywhere victorious. By the spring of 1895, Japan's military had destroyed the Qing navy and was in a position to take Beijing as peace treaty negotiations between the two sides began. China ended up paying Japan a large cash indemnity, giving Taiwan to Japan, and granting Japan the same treaty status as the "Western" countries. The first Sino-Japanese War marked the emergence of Japan as a major world military power. It also exposed the Qing dynasty's extreme weakness. Fearing the Qing dynasty would soon collapse and China would descend into anarchy, Britain, France, Russia, and Germany began dividing coastal China into what were euphemistically called *"spheres of influence,"* that is, areas of China under the de facto control of one of these European countries. By the turn of the century, large parts of China were virtual colonies. The sign "No Dogs or Chinese Allowed" posted at the British-controlled municipal park in Shanghai was a crude yet eloquent statement of the balance of power at the time. The United States was also involved in Chinese affairs at this time, but it never acquired a formal sphere of influence.

Despite defeat in wars with several different foreign powers and a number of major internal rebellions (the death toll in the Taiping Rebellion of the late 1850s was as high as 20 million by some estimates), the Qing dynasty managed to hang on to power. One reason for its undeserved longevity was that the European powers propped up the faltering dynasty because they found dealing with it convenient. From the British standpoint, for example, the Qing dynasty was ideal because it was too weak to offer effective military resistance to foreign powers but was still strong enough to maintain a semblance of internal order.

Following defeat in the war with Japan, there was a brief flurry of reform efforts somewhat like the earlier Self-Strengthening Movement, but more radical. For several months in the summer of 1898, it looked as if the reformers would carry the day, but reactionary forces eventually won out in September 21 of that year. The reforming emperor lost power in a palace coup, and his advisors ended up dead or in exile. What was probably the last chance for the Qing dynasty to reform itself had passed.

In 1896-7, riots took place in several of China's cities directed against Christian missionaries, most of whom were foreigners. In 1899, a secret society whose members practiced martial arts, magic, and religious activities began to attack Christians in the German-occupied Shandong area. This secret society was the Yihetuan, which means roughly "Righteousness and Harmony Militia." Because of the martial arts connection, however, the English name is Boxers. The Boxer Uprising of 1899-1900 began in Shandong Province in response to provocation by German missionaries. It quickly spread throughout north China, fueled by years of anger and outrage at the arrogance of the European powers and the inability of the Qing government to stop it. The Qing government wavered, making some attempts to suppress the movement but ultimately siding with it. The Boxers killed foreign and native Chinese Christians, burnt churches, and tore down electric poles. They eventually demanded all foreigners leave China and laid siege to the foreign embassy compound in Beijing in June 1900. The prevailing opinion outside China was that the relatively small group of foreigners could not possibly have held out.

In large areas of China, however, local governors maintained order and refused to participate in the uprising. The Qing government itself feared the Boxers almost as much as the foreigners did, and it did not provide them with heavy weapons. The lack of heavy weapons combined with disorganized leadership gave the besieged Europeans a chance at survival. They held out in their walled compound for nearly three months until a multi-national relief force arrived to rescue them. Certain elements of the multi-national relief force--mainly Russian and German soldiers, sometimes French--then went on a rampage of terror. They raped and slaughtered innocent Chinese peasants by the thousands and burnt whole villages to the ground. For the average Chinese in the area, it must have seemed that righteousness had indeed been on the side of the Boxers.

After the foreign armies put down the uprising and the smoke had cleared, it looked as if the Qing dynasty's days had *finally ended.* Nevertheless, the U.S. and major European powers *continued to support the dynasty,* fearing the anarchy that might result in the wake of its fall. The main reason the dynasty did not fall in 1900 or 1901 was the lack of any effective, organized opposition. It was not until 1911 that an internal revolution began that had sufficient force to overthrow the dynasty. As a result, in 1912 China became a republic. The end of the imperial age, however, did not mean an end to China's old problems. The first half of the twentieth century was a turbulent and sanguinary period for China and its people.

Notes:

1. Quoted in John W. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 202.

2. Ibid., p. 244.

3. Ibid., p. 243.

4. John E. Wills, Jr., Mountain of Fame: Portraits in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 203.

5. John King Fairbank, China: A New History (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 141.

6. The names of Chinese emperors, particularly in the Ming and Qing dynasties, commonly appear in history books in two different forms. The expression "the XX emperor" indicates one of these forms; "emperor XX" indicates the other. Some emperors are more commonly known by one form or the other, and in such cases we use it here. Students in an introductory course need not worry about these two different names for emperors. Throughout this book the name of each emperor appears the same way throughout.

7. Wills, Mountain of Fame, p. 204.

8. Ray Huang, China: A Macro History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1990), pp. 181-2.

9. Ibid., p. 185.

10. Ibid., p. 186.

11. Quoted in Jerry Dennerline, Qian Mu and the World of Seven Mansions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 20.

12. The concept of nation is beyond the scope of this course. The two best introductions to this important topic are Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983) and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition (New York: Verso, 1991). Or #go here.#

13. Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990), p. 85.

14. Ibid., p. 100.

15. Figures are those supplied in Spence, The Search for Modern China, p. 129.

16. Quoted in Ibid., p. 152.

17. Ibid., p. 157.

18. Huang, China: A Macro History, pp. 202-3.